Dr. Wittkopp's studies of evolution and development in Drosophila started during her undergraduate research with Dr. Greg Gibson at the University of Michigan (B.S. 1997), and continued during her doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin with Dr. Sean Carroll (Ph.D. 2002). From 2002-2005, Dr. Wittkopp studied the evolution of gene expression as a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. Andy Clark at Cornell University. Coming full circle, the Wittkopp lab was officially founded at U. Michigan in August 2005.

Joseph earned his Ph.D. at Kansas State University, working with Dr. Michael Herman on ecological genomics ofmicrobes and nematodes in August 2008. He began his postdoctoral work in September 2008 and has been using next-generation sequencing to investigate patterns of regulatory evolution among Drosophila species. This work is supported by a National Institutes of Health NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Rich joined the lab in the summer of 2011 after completing his PhD at UC Berkeley, where he worked with Mike Eisen to dissect the spatial relationships between transcription factor binding sites in Drosophila enhancers and yeast promoters. In the Wittkopp lab he is exploring how genetic variation between closely related Drosophila species drives patterns of change in expression and transcription factor binding. This work is supported by an NIH NSRA postdocotral fellowship.

Fabien joined the lab in May 2012 after conducting doctoral studies on the evolution of a robust developmental system in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans in Marie-Anne Félix’ team (University Paris 7). For his postdoctoral work, he is now interested in understanding how noise in gene expression can affect fitness and how past selection pressures on gene expression can influence future evolutionary trajectories using experimental evolution approaches in yeast.

Gizem earned her B.S. in Molecular Biology and Genetics in 2005 from Bogazici University (Istanbul, Turkey). She also spent a summer studying evolution and development with Dr. Matthias Gerberding at the Max Planck Institute (Tuebingen, Germany). Gizem officially joined the Wittkopp lab in April 2006, with a primary focus on studying the effects of new mutations on gene expression in yeast. She is also creating transgenic Drosophila to study regulatory divergence in flies. Gizem recently graduated in Winter 2012 and is staying on as a post-doctoral fellow until Fall 2012.

Dave earned his B.A. in genetics and molecular biology from Northwestern University. He then worked as a research technician with Dr. David Jacobs at UCLA, recovering and studying expression of sensory organ genes in basal metazoans (jellyfish and anemone), and subsequently earned a M.S. degree with Dr. Charles Taylor at UCLA examining biostatistical analyses of seasonal incidence of malaria and other infectious diseases in Mali. Dave officially joined the lab in April 2009 and is now collecting and analyzing mutations that affect the expression of a variety of genes in yeast.

Brian earned his B.S. in Genetics and Microbiology from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009. During that time he worked for Dr. Carol Lee on the ecology and evolutionary biology of the invasive copepod Eurytemora affinis. His current projects focus on determining the relationship between pleiotropy and fitness, and how pleiotropy can bias the set of mutations which are ultimately evolutionarily relevant. Brian is currently supported by a Rackham Merit Fellowship and the Genome Sciences Training Program.

Kraig earned his B.S. in statistics from Michigan State University in 2007. Afterwards, he joined Sebastian Zoellner's group at the University of Michigan Department of Biostatistics, where he studied leveraging population structure in sibling genotype data and CNV detection from microarray data. After receiving his M.S. in biostatistics in 2009, he entered the Bioinformatics Graduate Program as a PhD student. He officially joined the lab in January 2010 and is developing methods to classify regulatory divergence between closely related species of Drosophila using next-generation sequencing data.

Elizabeth received her M.S. in Biology from Winthrop University in May of 2010. As a graduate student, Elizabeth spent two years researching evolutionarily-conserved mechanisms in the heart of the sea squirt, Ciona intestinalis. Elizabeth joined the lab in Fall 2010 as both a lab manger and research technician. She is currently assisting with various projects in the lab.

Laura started working in the lab in June 2011. She is working under the guidance of Joe Coolon. The main project she is currently pursuing investigatesgene expression differences underlying the resistance of D. sechellia and susceptibility of D. simulans to octanoic acid. Laura is a senior concentrating in Evolutionary Anthropology and minoring in Biology. In the fall she plans to apply to graduate programs in Biology, with a particular interest in evolutionary genetics.

Emily started in the lab in August 2012. She is a junior concentrating in Evolutionary and Ecology Biology, with a minor in Spanish. She is currently working with our research Tech, Elizabeth Walker on several projects as well as general lab maintenance.